aliengrove wrote:What Ralph's is referring to there is microstock, where you need to sell the image multiple times to make it worthwhile. I know a guy who shoots microstock all the time, and makes money from it, but it's totally screwed up his photography. You go for a meal or a drink with him and he will be rearranging stuff on the table while talking to you, then snapping get a cheesy picture of a napkin and a wine glass. Imo microstock is a very bad thing for photography

Couldn't agree more. And then that microstock is used for cheesy adverts which are a bad thing for the mental health of anyone subjected to them. it must be so soul destroying creating fuel for an industry everyone hates.

He sells a lot of those beautiful girl getting out of swimming pool or exercising in gym type images.

aliengrove wrote:......... Since then I have sold less images, but I get 100%. The sale of one image, that had previously been licensed through Getty Images., made me more than I ever made from Getty, so it turned out to be a good choice in spite of advice from other photographers to stay with them.

Some stock agencies pay a higher percentage (up to 70%). I am thinking about signing up with another agency, and only uploading images I don't sell prints of, ie images I don't rate as my best. It can provide a steady, albeit usually small, trickle of cash. Stock images generally sell for between 75 to 400 US dollars, much more than microstock.

Another friend of mine has paid for all his equipment (which is all very high-end stuff, including studio equipment) with stock photography, but he does spend quite a bit of time shooting stock images. He is unusual though, in that he shoots portfolios for cabin crew for free, on the understanding that they will sign model releases for some of the images to be sold as stock. He sells a lot of those beautiful girl getting out of swimming pool or exercising in gym type images.

Really interesting Jon.

Am I right in thinking that the big sale you made was the aerial shot you were telling us about a while back? All credit to you for leveraging your advantage (not many of us can get in cockpits nowadays for good reason!) and I guess to a certain extent one could argue that your friends contact with flight crew (can I come too ) has enabled him access to material thats otherwise challenging to come by.

What I'm reading from this is that its probably easier to make money if you have an interest or access with some barrier to entry or specialism, for an average Joe shooter like me without some sort of competitive advantage its probably more difficult to say "right I'm going to make my photography pay, now what can I shoot?" unless you are going to massively change your life like Ralph (credit Ralph) invest, train and market. Even then I'm not sure did Ralph have some sort of competitive advantage re his previous work?

I guess I could wander round Bedfordshire looking for flight crew with a bundle of model release forms and become famous thereafter by an appearance on "24 Hours in Police Custody" LOL